1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to digital ink and, more specifically to techniques for adjusting a drying time of digital ink.
2. Related Art
Digital ink refers to technology that facilitates digital representation of handwriting, drawing, sketching, and painting (among other inputs) in their natural form. In a typical digital ink system, a digitizer is laid under (or over) a display screen, e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD), to capture movement of a special-purpose pen (or stylus) and record the movement on the screen. Visually, moving a stylus across a screen is similar to writing or drawing on paper with liquid ink. When the movement corresponds to handwriting, the recorded handwriting can then be saved as digitized handwriting or converted to typewritten text using handwriting recognition technology.
Digital ink also allows users to, for example, create a sketch, a painting, or a drawing, take free-hand notes, and annotate existing documents (e.g., visual presentation documents, spreadsheet documents, and text documents). In many applications, using a pen to input information into a tablet personal computer (PC) is quicker and easier than using a keyboard or mouse. For example, free-form notes created with digital ink may be readily emailed to other individuals for review. Motion of a pen across a surface of a screen is reflected on the screen as a series of data points. As the pen is moved across the screen, information from the pen movement is collected in a process known as sampling and save in a memory.
A typical tablet PC is capable of sampling about one-hundred thirty pen events (units of motion that correspond to data points) per second. The pen events are then represented visually on the screen as pen strokes. Employing a relatively high sampling rate allows digital ink to be displayed and stored with relatively high graphical resolution, which is desirable for visual legibility on a screen and for maximizing accuracy during a handwriting recognition process. In handwriting recognition applications, a greater number of collected data points usually equates to greater accuracy when the collected data points (are passed through a recognizer and) associated with words. Digital ink systems may be incorporated within a wide variety of devices, e.g., tablet PCs, personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones, etc. Tablet PCs are often used where normal notebook computer systems (notebooks) are impractical, unwieldy, or do not provide a needed functionality. Today, digital ink (of conventional digital ink systems) is permanent unless an erase command is employed to erase the digital ink and a specific tool is required to smudge digital ink.